11 Muslims in Japan with the comparison of those in Europe Samir A. Nouh Introduction A discussion of Islam in Japan needs first to identify the dates of earlier contacts between Japan and Muslim world. There were some direct encounters between Japanese and Muslims before Ottoman Turks sent a naval vessel Ertugrul to Japan in 1890, First group consisted of 36 men led by Takeuchi Yasunori arrived in Suez on March 1862 for the overland journey by steam train to Alexandria. The Second group of Japanese travelers was 34 men led by Ikeda Nagaoki, bound to France, they arrived Egypt in 1864; they travelled to Giza to see the Pyramids! Also, it should be mentioned that the first merchant ship under a Muslim flag to reach Japan in modern times was the SADQIA of the BEY of Tunis in (That time the Bey of Tunisia was Muhammad III assadiq, born Feb.1813 and ruled from Sept till his death Oct. 1882, the beys of Tunis were the Monarchs of Tunisia from 1705 until 1957.) In 1880 Japan sent a mission to Persian Gulf, the descriptions Ienori Honjuku ( ) provided in his report of the voyage were the first eyewitness report of the Persian Gulf Region in Japan. Muslims began arriving in Modern Japan from the beginning of the OPENING of the country. Most of them were Malay and Yemeni sailors serving aboard British or Dutch ships. Few Arab, Turk and Indian Muslims have been living in Japan since 1865; some of them were import-export merchants. In 1883 Abu Bakar, Sultan of Johor was the first Muslim head of state to visit Japan and meet The Meiji Emperor and Japanese political officials and European diplomats. By the early 20 century few foreign Muslims lived in Japan started to introducing Islam to Japanese and a handful of ethnic Japanese began to convert to Islam. 1. Muslims in Japan Contacts between Islam and Japan Contacts between Islam and Japan were not constant over the years. There were periods of interruption, because these contacts depended on political circumstances and economic interests that varied from period to period, and this affected the position of the Muslims in Japan. The presence of Islam in Japan depended on 1- the very few non-japanese who came to Japan for various reasons, 2- Several Japanese who converted to Islam to serve the objectives of Japanese policy, 3- And a small number of Japanese who encountered Islam while traveling outside Japan and meeting Muslims. The first Japanese Muslim is said to be Abdul Halim Shotaro Noda ( ) followed by the second Japanese Muslim, Torajiro Yamada who met Noda when he arrived at Istanbul on April 4, The lifestyle of Noda was not praised as a Muslim one, that is why he was forgotten, and the people thought that Yamada was the First Muslim, Bunpachiro Ariga(Ahmad) who became Muslim in Bombay, India in 1900, did all his best to explain Islam to the people around him, he published 2

12 Islamic booklets and translating the meaning of The Holly Quran. Sheikh Ahmed Ali Al Jirjawi arrived in Japan in 1906 to participate in the interfaith dialogue conference in Tokyo, he claimed that Japanese converted to Islam and the Indian Ulama also estimated the number of converted Japanese Muslims by 12000, but Sheikh Muhammed Barakatullah ( ) who arrived in Japan in 1909 denied such information. On July 16, 1912 Japan Weekly Mail wrote: The propagation of Islam has recently commenced both in Tokyo and Yokohama, the principal preacher of this faith is Mr. Barakatullah. At present there is only one Japanese convert, but there are 2 Chinese and 24 converts belonging to other nations, they meet at Barakatullah s house every Friday. (Japanese converted is Mr. Hatano who wrote a small book entitled Asia in Danger that was sent all over the world, this booklet was translated into Ottoman Turkish by Abdurrashid Ibrahim. Japanese newspaper wrote nothing about Omar Yamaoka the first Japanese who performed Hajj, and wrote nothing about Ohara Takeyoshi, a military intelligence officer who converted to Islam on the advice of Abdurrashid Ibrahim, Ohara was named Abu Bakr, the same as the first Khalifa s name, while Yamaoka was given the name Omar, the same as the second Khalifa s name. In the year Sheikh Barakatulla arrived at Tokyo 1909, Omar Kotaro Yamaoka who became Muslim in Bombay started his Journey to Makah but that was not completely for the sake of Islam. First Muslim Community in Japan Although there were already some Muslims in Japan, it could be argued that Japan s first Muslim communities were formed when most of the Turkish immigrants based themselves in Tokyo and Kobe, and a number of Muslim traders from India and elsewhere reached Kobe to form a Muslim community there. This group established the Kobe mosque with the support of Indian traders in 1935, a few years before the Muslim community in Tokyo founded the Tokyo mosque in It is clear that the Muslim communities both in Kobe and in Tokyo, which included mostly non-japanese Muslims, were not large, but the establishment of the Kobe mosque and the Tokyo mosque became a symbol of the presence of Islam and of Muslims in Japan. It was expected that the Muslim community would grow year after year, but facts and evidence indicate that this did not happen. Perhaps the failure to grow was due to; 1- A split between Turk-Tatar members of the community. 2- The destruction of the Ottoman Empire. 3- And Japan s defeat in the Second World War, which destroyed the dream of establishing the Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere. This led to the displacement of the leaders of the Muslim community or forced them to escape from Japan, and there has been no one to take any part in any kind of religious activities. New Start for Japanese Muslims The first Muslim association consisting only of Japanese nationals was established in 1952, the total number of members was about seventy-four, Japanese Muslims began contacting the Islamic world, welcoming Muslims coming from outside Japan, and cooperating with Muslim businessmen and 3

13 Muslim students coming to study in Japan. Japanese Muslims formed a joint committee with non-japanese Muslim residents in Japan and decided to establish the Islamic Center of Tokyo and a Muslim cemetery. It is noted that Muslims living in Japan were not a single Muslim community but formed independent associations according to their countries of origin, or nationalities. In 1968 the JMA began to open up to Japanese society through the establishment of social service activities and by explaining Islam in the Japanese media. Moreover, Japanese non-muslim companies were invited to join the association as associate members. While strengthening relations with the Muslim world by representing Japan at conferences and other events, the JMA also received kings and other national leaders from the Arab and Islamic worlds. With the increase in the number of Muslims living in Japan, various Islamic associations have been founded by both Japanese and non-japanese Muslim residents. Relation between Japan and Muslim Countries and its impact on Muslims in Japan After the 1973 oil crisis, Japan s interest in the Gulf Arab countries and the Muslim world increased, and in turn Arab and Islamic countries started seeking to consolidate their relations with Japan. They competed with each other in this area. Some Arab and Islamic embassies opened cultural offices, and others established schools. It is noted that Muslims in Japan have depended mostly on aid from the Muslim world, and their activities have depended more or less on the amount of that aid. Without such aid, these activities might come to an end. But some associations and other groups, which have been mainly self-sufficient and depended on voluntary contributions from their members, have continued to engage in activities and provide services to the community of Muslims in Japan and abroad. This can be seen by examining the activities of the JMA; the Islamic Center; and the Indonesian, Indian, and Pakistani communities. The Indian and Pakistani community is a good example of self-sufficiency. They fund themselves from within and have contributed many projects out of their own pockets and have succeeded in drawing Japanese into their charity activities. Their activities during the tragedy of Fukushima were covered by Japanese TV and newspapers and were appreciated by the Japanese public. Number of Muslims in Japan and roll of Mosques The existence of a religious community applying the teachings of its religion is not only important but also essential. Japanese people came to know about Islam when they saw Muslim immigrants in Japan practicing their religion.. It was necessary from the very beginning to establish mosques in Japan because a mosque is more than a place of prayer or worship. It plays a central role in the life of Muslim communities everywhere. Before the 1980s the number of Muslims in Japan was small, and there were only two mosques, in Kobe and Tokyo. But in the mid-1980s, the number of Muslims in Japan grew rapidly. Most young Muslims have families, and their children go to Japanese schools, but their parents also send them to the mosque to learn the Qur an and the Arabic language. Scholars say that the number of mosques in Japan has increased more rapidly than the number of Muslims, which has not increased as much as expected despite the passage of many years. The 4

14 establishment of mosques, associations, unions, and Islamic cultural centers in Japan does not reflect the number of Japanese and non-japanese Muslims living in Japan. In other words, these organizations do not reflect the size of the Muslim community in Japan. There is no accurate record of the number of Muslim residents in Japan, but scholars estimate the number of non-japanese Muslims at eighty thousand to one hundred thousand and Japanese Muslims at eight thousand to ten thousand. Is there a Muslim Community in Japan? The Situation of Muslims nowadays. Can Muslims establish their own community in Japan? We must shed light on the reasons why the number of Muslims in Japan is not increasing and why the lack of growth may affect the survival of the Japanese Muslim community. A decreasing number of Muslims in Japan would affect the stability of the Muslim community itself. The Muslim community faces divisions among its members, and there are divisions or disputes between Muslims even of the same nationality. A few examples can be noted from the beginning of the Muslim presence in Japan. Although the number of Muslims in Japan seemed to increase, they were unable to establish a real Muslim community in Japan because the Muslim students coming to study or receive training went back to their home countries soon after finishing their study or training. In addition, many Japanese Muslims were deployed by Japanese corporations to work outside Japan for long periods, and some of them did not return home. This had a negative impact on the Muslim community, which needed their help. The number of female Japanese Muslims far exceeded the number of males, which created a problem for Japanese Muslim women who wanted to marry and have children and have stability in their lives as Muslims, and they had difficulty finding suitable work. Add to this the religious freedom of Japan, which allows family members to belong to different religions. A son and daughter may belong to a religion different from that of their parents and vice versa. Hence it is not easy to form a united Japanese Muslim family within Japanese society. The father may be a Muslim while the mother is a Christian, or a son may be a Muslim while his parents are non-muslims, and so on. Islam in Japan is not a matter of birth but of faith, and no one is compelled to embrace its doctrines. Muslims who come to work or do business in Japan face difficulties for reasons that need not be mentioned here. They cannot necessarily continue to live or settle in Japan, but some Muslim men have married Japanese women and found refuge with their wives and their wives families and struggled to settle in Japan. Marriages between young male Muslim immigrants in Japan and Japanese women is considered the real beginning of groups of Muslim families that live near each other in areas close to the workplace of the head of the family or of the wife or her family. This phenomenon is evident in Tokyo and its suburbs, and here we can say clearly that the Muslim community really exists in Japan. This fact has drawn the attention of Japanese officials, who have begun to study this situation in areas where there are many Muslims. They have polled local people on their attitudes toward their Muslim neighbors, and the polls show favorable attitudes. 5

15 Issues and problems With the increasing number of Muslim families and the expansion of areas where Muslims are gathering, Muslims have begun to think about building more mosques and schools as well as holding religious ceremonies and reviving Islamic events throughout the year. The number of mosques in Japan has grown rapidly every year. The Muslim community supports the building of mosques with the help of Islamic organizations outside Japan as well as people who give donations for the building of mosques. Since mosques in Japan offer Qur an and Arabic classes, a few mosques plan to register themselves as educational corporations and establish Islamic schools. Some offer day care centers with no legal status for Muslim children. With the presence of small children in Muslim families, there is a need to establish schools suitable for this new generation of Muslims. Members of the community are eager to establish such schools, which are also keenly committed to the curriculum of the Japanese schools, since they do not want to split the young from their society. With the emergence of what can be called a Muslim community in Japan, Muslims have faced some internal and external problems. The internal problems are related to the community itself, which consists of both Japanese Muslims and non-japanese Muslims living in Japan, Muslims who want to work in Japan, and Muslims who come for a period of study or training. The Muslim community also includes Muslims from many different countries, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Arab countries. The Muslim community also includes Muslims of various sects and embracing various doctrines, Japanese Muslims are few in number, even though they are distributed among the various sects and schools of Islamic thinking. There are Japanese Sunnis and Japanese Shiites, and there are Salafis and Asharis and so on. However, they never engage in sectarian conflict, because the nature of Japanese culture allows differences while maintaining friendliness and respect. This has impacted the members of the Muslim community as a whole. Japanese and non-japanese seek to integrate into the community by taking advantage of all that is well and good. The members of the Indian, Pakistani, Bengali communities are a good model, since they are the most actively devoted to their religion, and they are appreciated by Japanese society. The Muslim community in Japan is still trying to solve the problem of educating its children, since Japanese recognition of Islam is extremely low in the education ministry and local governments, which is basically because they have had little experience of direct communication with Muslims. Therefore most religious education of Muslim children in Japan is supported by individual efforts, without official assistance. That is because Muslims are a small minority, and small minorities do not receive special attention. Private international schools may give more attention to a child s religious background, but a public school is the only choice for Muslim parents with limited means. Muslim parents have objections about Japanese school uniforms, school lunches, and mixed-sex physical education activities, such as swimming. The textbooks used in Japanese schools lack correct information about Islam and Muslim life. Some kind of more organized approach is necessary to address the specific education needs of Muslims in Japan. The key issues and problems faced by the Muslim community include the difficult circumstances that arose after the events of September 11, 2001, when the U.S. government stereotyped all Muslims as terrorists and pressured many countries to tighten control on all Muslims, 6

16 without consideration, and Japan was not an exception. In that situation, the Japanese people faced difficult questions: What is Islam? Is Islam really responsible for what happened on September 11, it was not only the Muslim community that attempted to answer these questions; a number of Japanese researchers tried to explain Islam and its principles as well. They concluded that what happened on September 11 was not related to the religion of Islam, but U.S. pressure made Japanese officials take extra security precautions and monitor Muslims living in Japan. As a result, the Japanese media launched an attack on the counterterrorism unit of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department s Public Security Bureau. The media said it exceeded its jurisdiction by listing as terror suspects many Muslims who had lived and worked in Japan for decades. Apparently the Japanese police, under pressure from U.S. authorities, adopted this attitude toward Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 in search of intelligence data among the city s tiny Muslim community. The Public Security Bureau was set up during the Junichiro Koizumi government after 9/11 to coordinate and gather antiterrorism intelligence. Conclusion I myself feel that non-japanese Muslims in Japan have widely retained their sense of religious and cultural identity and have generally become established as members of Japanese society. However, the Japanese police and the Japanese public must continue to accept these religious and cultural differences in order to maintain a functional society in which the rights of all people are protected. Though the Muslim community is very small, the Japanese public of today has generally accepted it as part of Japanese society. For the most part, Japanese people accept cultural differences as colorful aspects of the world and understand that other cultures are actually not very different from their own. There are currently between thirty and forty single-story mosques in Japan, plus another hundred or more apartments used as musalla. The pious activities of the JMA members have made the JMA a core organization among religious organizations in Japan. JMA members are doing their best with the combined efforts of all Muslim groups in Japan to contribute to world peace and the social peace of individual members. Islamic circle of Japan (ICOJ) is playing a great roll in explaining Islam and Islamic culture to Japanese people. Last year, after the tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami in Fokushima, the Muslim community proved that Muslims in Japan genuinely share the joys and sorrows of Japanese society. Members of the Muslim community contributed immensely to the relief efforts, and they continue to help the affected communities in the Tohoku region. Islam teaches its followers to generously offer humanitarian aid wherever the need may arise. Muslims have gone on supporting relief efforts in Japan along with Japanese and foreign relief agencies. One notable Muslim organization is Japan Islamic Trust, which has been supplying food and other necessities since the disaster took place. Other organizations were also visiting the affected areas and victims, helping the residents resettle in areas of their choice. 7

17 2. Muslims in Europe Presence of Muslims in Europe It is well known that the presence of Muslims in Europe is old. It dates back to the Middle Ages, there have been Muslims living in Europe for many centuries and as Tariq Ramadan asserts, it is and it was a reality, within many fields, the legal field, the philosophical field and the scientific fields. Ramadan added, we very often forget that Islam and Muslims, the Islamic tradition, and Muslim philosophers, scientists and thinkers were and are a part of the structure of European Identity. Muslims have been part of European society contributing to its economic, social and political development. For some European countries former colonial ties played a significant role, in France migration was largely from Morocco, Algeria and other north African countries, in Netherlands Muslim Emigrants came from Indonesia, in the U K Muslim migrants came manly from subcontinent India and Pakistan and after 1980 Muslim refugee arrived Europe from Iran, Iraq and Turkey, and after 1990 from Balkan, and North Africa. Muslims also arrived as students, professionals and investors (Turkey 2.3 million, Morocco 1.7 million, Albania 0.8 and Algeria 0.6) There are estimated to be million Muslims living in EU, and it is expected to double by 2025, ( The OSI ( Open Society Institute, At Home in Europe project, A Report on 11 EU Cities 2010 Printed in Hungary) some Muslims in Europe are recent immigrants, others are second or third generation Europeans, there are five European countries with significant Muslim population: France 4,704,000 next Germany 4,119,000 then United Kingdom 2,869,000 followed by Spain 1,021,000 and Netherlands 900,000 ( January 2011 CRS Congressional Research Services Report prepared for the Congress title is Muslims in Europe: Promoting Integration and countering Extremism This report examines policies aimed at promoting integration, combating terrorism and countering violent extremism in France, Germany, the Netherlands and United Kingdom ) Most of Muslims live in Capital cities and large industrial towns and they are suspicious. (The OSI Open Society Institute, At Home in Europe project, A Report on 11 EU Cities 2010 Printed in Hungary) Clash with Islam in Europe: Nowadays distorted image of Islam is spreading in Europe, especially in France, the country which has taught the world liberty, fraternity and equality. Thousands of books, articles and statements of officials reveal hatred towards Islam explicitly or implicitly. Clash with Islam began very early, but it appeared evidently in the modern era after European countries occupied Muslim countries, in case of France, after France occupied Algeria, and clash with Islam began in Egypt when Egyptian started resistance to British occupation, Clashes, conflicts and violence in a country like France are in fact political not religious, and they, I mean clashes and violence, were the only way to express anger at the attacks on the rights and the dignity and independence of Muslims in their country and Jihad was only a liberation movement. I take France as an example, anti-semitism is a crime under French law, but anti-islam is not a crime, it is a legitimate exercise of freedom of opinion, the tragedy of French thinker Jaroudi is a model for both who dare to say a word against Zionism or would say a word of truth about Islam, 8

18 according to Garoudi, Islam is an obstacle to the West s policy of economic and cultural domination on Islamic world. Garoudi says: Islam does not deny Christianity, the Quran mentioned Jesus and Mary with great respect, while Western intellectuals think all the time that Islam is an enemy to them. Salman Rushdie who continued insulting Islam, Quran and prophet of Islam is favored and welcomed and honored by western countries. Islam as a second religion in Europe: In recent years, France officially recognized Islam. Islam became the second religion in France where the number of Muslims who have French citizenship is estimated by four millions, so intolerance has been increased among the French officials. The French newspaper Le Figaro published articles raised concerns and fears among the French about Islam such as the article titled Europeans are wondering about how to coexist with Islam Le Figaro wrote that the Europeans do not understand the reality of the threat of Islam. So the European officials started focusing on such threat and want to control immigration from Islamic countries to Europe especially after Muslims arrived in Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. European Islam Scholars are interested in discussing issues and perceptions of the west to Islam and its role with European countries, European Islam and its role and trends, and why interest in Islamic phenomenon increased in Europe after the rise of so called war on terrorism. Scholars are also interested in discussing Muslim presence in Europe, and why the increasing of the number of Muslim immigrants is considered a danger to European identity? Because Islam is a religion and values, and the people who believe in it, are seeking their rights as a separated religion group, so there is a conflict of identity and integration resulting from the construction of Islamic (community) in Europe. There are fears and suspicious about the integration of Muslims in the existing national groupings in European countries. In France the Islamic presence is shifting from just a simple social phenomenon to the issue of national public opinion; in Britain the most encouraging factors, for the integration of Muslims in British society are education and Islamic schools, the role of universities, the role of mosques and Imams, and the economic and social conditions of the Muslims, the role of media and British foreign policy towards the Muslim world. It is clear that there are several factors contributed to the evolution of Islam phobia in the West and bringing it to the stage of obsessing, and increasing fears of Islamic fundamentalism and Jihad, even the vast majority of Muslims in Europe are not involve in radical activities. Attitude of European governments towards Muslims in Europe European governments are doing more efforts to improve Muslim integration, such as introducing new citizenship laws, promoting dialogue with Muslim organizations, developing Imams who are more familiar with European culture and traditions and improving educational and economic opportunities for Muslims but in the same time European governments have also sought to 9

19 strengthen security measures and tighten immigration to combat (so called) terrorism ( January 2011 CRS Congressional Research Services Report prepared for the Congress title is Muslims in Europe: Promoting Integration and countering Extremism) Countries such as Germany and Spain remain caution about limiting the rights of freedom of speech and assembly, as well as security policies that could intrude on the right to privacy or on religious freedoms. The CRS Congressional Research Services Report suggests that: Recently, Europeans have come to recognize the necessity of better integrating their Muslims population, to reduce social tensions and inequalities, to help prevent radicalization and counter violent extremism. The OSI research report suggests that Religious discrimination against Muslims remains a critical barrier to fill and equal participation in society, research suggests that level of religious discrimination directed towards Muslims have increased in the past five years. European born Muslims identify the police as a key source of unfair treatment and discrimination, for Muslims, the persistence of discrimination and prejudice affects the sense of national belonging. But The OSI research finds many positive initiatives taken by European officials at the local level to engage with ethnic and religious organizations, and there are ideas to support Muslims and non-muslims communities strengthen their trust in each other and increase their ability to work together to achieve common goals. PP ) Young Muslims, with more education and familiarity with political institutions, have greater confidence in their ability to effect local change than the older generations; Muslims are active in mainstream political parties. Parties based on ethnic and religious identity have not gained the support of Muslim votes. What Muslims in Europe should do according to Tariq Ramadan? Tareq Ramadan asserts that Muslims today are required to abandon all sectarian tendencies; it should not be confused with the assembly of faith and methods of sectarian tendency dumped in isolation and uniqueness at the social, political and legislative levels. He added, there is something that is clear now within the mainstream public Muslim discourse: Europe is home, it is not perceived as though we are not at home, this old business of Dar al Harb and Dar al Islam is something which is still in some discourse, but those who speak this way are on the margin of Muslim communities, the reality is that the main stream Muslim leaders, organizations and even citizens feel at home in Europe. Problem of Immigration in Europe is similar to that one in Japan, but in Europe it is perceived a threat, and yet at the same time a necessity, it is that Europe needs 11 million workers within the next fifteen years. Where are these workers supposed to come from? Europe is thinking now and having new laws and new security rules that are very tough because Muslim presence is perceived as a threat. Now I want to end asking you; do you think it will be perceived as a threat in Japan as well?! I leave you to think about it! References - A Sea Voyage to Persian Gulf 1880 by Ienori Hanjuku, translated by Yukie Suehiro and Michael 10

20 Penn, SEJJIR Volume 2 Sept The first Japanese Muslim by Misawa Nobuo and Goknur Akcadac, AJAMES no Islam in Japan by Abu Bakr Morimuto, translated by Iskanadar Chawidry Tokyo 1980 translated into Arabic by Ali Zaghloul, Maktabatul Aadab Cairo 2011 Muslim Nippon by Tazawa Kakuyo Tokyo Nihon Islam shi by Mustafa Kimura Tokyo!988 -Niho no Gaikujin imin by Hiroshi Komai Akashi Shoten The crescent in the land of Rising Sun by M Abdul azizi London The Reception of Islam and Muslims in Japanese High schools, by Toru Miura and Takaaki Matsumoto, Annals of the Japan Association for Middle East Studies Vol. 21, No 2 March Japan and Middle East by Katakura Kunio Middle East Institute of Japan Tokyo Japan and the Gulf, A Historical Perspective of Pre-oil Relations by Hosaka Shuji - Diversity as Advantage in a Homogeneous Society: The Educational Environment for Muslims in Japan by Hideki Maruyama SEJJIR Volume 1, March Variations in Demographic Characteristics of foreign Muslim population in Japan : A Preliminary Estimation by Hiroshi Kojima a paper printed in The Japanese Journal of Population Vol.4, No.1 March Demographic Analysis of Muslim in Japan by Hiroshi Kojima International Symposium on Middle East, Asia and Islam Oct An Aspect of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in Wartime Japan. A Case of Hajime Kobayashi ( ) by Usuki Akira in AJAMES No PP , - Ayaz Ishaki and Turco-Tatars in the Far East by Matsunaga Akira in The Rising Sun and the Turkish Crescent Ed. By Selcuk Esenbel and Inaba Chiharu, Bogazici University Press, Istanbul Short History of Japan Muslim Association in English 2005 and in Arabic 2009 published by Japan Muslim Association Tokyo - The first Japanese Hadji Yamaoka Kotaro and Abdurresid Ibrahim by Sakamoto Tsutomu in - The Rising Sun and the Turkish Crescent Ed. By Selcuk Esenbel and Inaba Chiharu, Bogazici University Press, Istanbul The Advent of Islam in Korea by Hee-soo Lee Istanbul Self-Understanding of Europe and Abrahmic Religion by Tariq Ramadan CISMOR International Workshop 2006, Nov Muslim in Cotemporary Japan by Keiko Sakai International Symposium on Middle East, Asia and Islam Oct Muslims in Europe: Promoting Integration and countering Extremism CRS Congressional Research Services Report Sept 7, 2011 ( ) - At Home in Europe project, A Report on 11 EU Cities, The OSI Open Society Institute, Printed in Hungary 2010 In Arabic and Urdu - Islam and Religions in Japan by Samir Nouh King abdel Aziz memorial Liberery Riyadh

22 From Confrontation to Global Partnership Europe and Japan Dimitri Vanoverbeke INTRODUCTION How did the EU--Japan relationship develop over time? How can the dots be tied together? I try to explain both the path which the EU and Japan have embarked on since the 1970s and the direction these economic giants are heading to. It has often been said that there is no future without history. If that is so, the insights to be gained from an analysis of the dynamics of the past and present relationship between the EU and Japan can provide valuable contributions to the preparation and implementation of a future EU--Japan political and economic framework. Looking at what has been achieved in the past, considering which approaches have been successful and which not, reflecting on which hurdles had to be overcome and which obstacles still remain is instructive not only from an academic point of view, but also for those involved in drafting the contours of the future partnership between the EU and Japan. THE GENESIS OF POSTWAR EU--JAPAN RELATIONS Economic growth in Japan developed at a remarkable pace already since the Meiji Restoration in The first export markets that were targeted by mainly the textile industries were to be found in Europe. France, Germany, England but also the Netherlands and Belgium played an important role as export markets and advisors for the modernization of Japanese institutions that became the base for industrial growth. 1 The most important trading partner of Japan during the nineteenth century was not the US neither China, but Europe. Indeed, the first economic miracle 2 in the decades after the Meiji Restoration was induced by Europe. After the Second World War, the European countries became once more a stepping stone for Japan s second economic miracle, but this time much more in the shadow of a newly arisen superpower: the United States. Europe s high income-elastic markets became the other target for Japan. As a large, economically advanced and increasingly integrated area, Europe was attractive to Japanese exporters of especially high value-added industrial goods. As a result, Japanese products overflowed the European markets and complaints by domestic producers started to erupt for various reasons. Consequently Europe, initially at the level of individual member states but increasingly at the European level, experienced growing trade tensions and became engaged in outright conflicts with Japan just as the US were. 3 At times the tensions that arose between Japan and European states were as serious as those facing the US and Japan, and just as difficult to manage without resorting to outright protectionism, which, in turn, might have invited a protectionist backlash from the US. Indeed, from the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, the most difficult period in the relationship, both the US and the EEC/EC/EU remained very much alert to any risk of trade diversion should the other 1 T. Morris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan: From the Seventeenth to the Twenty-first Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp S. Shuhei, Origins of Economic Thought in Modern Japan, London and New York: Routledge, Some of the many publications on the issue of trade conflicts between the US and Japan: W. Dobson and H. Sato (eds), Managing US--Japanese trade disputes: are there better ways? Ottawa: Centre for Trade Policy and Law, 1996; N. Naka, Predicting Outcomes in United States--Japan Trade Negotiations: The Political Process of the Structural Impediment Initiative, Praeger Pub: Westport,

23 take trade restricting measures vis-à-vis Japan. INCREASING TENSIONS IN THE 1970s Economic relations between the European Community (EC) and Japan first came into focus in the 1970s. The EC was at that time engaged in internal institutional and economic developments as barriers between Member States were reduced. Japan, for its part, was building up its industry by advances in new growth industries, such as consumer electronics and computers, and higher productivity in industrial industries. The net result of these adjustments in its economic policy was to increase the energy efficiency of manufacturing and to expand so-called knowledge-intensive industries. This new policy of the Japanese authorities also aimed at developing exports of motor vehicles, electronic products and other specialized sectors. 4 The first multilateral negotiations between the EC and Japan started in 1971 and aimed at concluding an EC--Japan agreement to replace the existing bilateral arrangements and restrictions. The discussions failed when Japan baulked at the inclusion of a safeguard clause. It was clear from the onset that negotiations on trade issues would not be easy because both sides wanted to sustain similar levels of economic growth as during the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, one step forward was made through the establishment of permanent missions in Brussels and Tokyo, regular High-Level Consultations and ministerial visits. On the trade side, however, there were mounting difficulties throughout this period. Japanese exports increased substantially in a range of sectors such as steel, cars, machine tools, ball bearings, TV and electro-technical products. EC exports to Japan, on the other hand, showed little improvement. European negotiators increasingly realized that the closely integrated nature of the Japanese industry at all levels made import penetration exceptionally difficult and that therefore no substantial changes in import levels of manufactured goods could be achieved. 5 The closed Japanese market started to attract the attention for the first time of American scholars and policymakers alike. The difficulty of exporting to Japan, aggravated by the 1973 and 1979 oil crises, led to an ever-increasing EC trade deficit with Japan. For both, relations with the US were of critical importance, with apprehensions on the EC s part that Japan would favor the American side of the triangle. The beginning of Japanese investment in manufacturing industries in Europe was one of the few positive signs. Although the number of meetings intensified and agreements such as the 1978 Ushiba--Haferkamp Joint Statement provided a brief respite, the political and economic pressure for stronger measures grew steadily and in 1982 the EC called upon Article XXIII of the GATT on the ground of Japan s nullification and impairment of the benefits negotiated in successive GATT Rounds. 6 The EC arguments and evidence were set out in written proceedings and the matter was pursued in a series of meetings in Geneva. Japan rejected the EC s position, although the facts advanced were not disputed. The basic issue between the two sides thus remained unresolved. The general discourse in the first period of the EC--Japan relationship was therefore one of tension and confrontation. 4 R. Dore, Flexible Rigidities: Industrial Policy and Structural Adjustment in the Japanese Economy, , Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, G.R. Saxonhouse, The Micro- and Macroeconomics of Foreign Sales to Japan, in W.R. Cline (ed.), Trade Policies in the 1980 s, Washington D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1983, pp ; G.R. Saxonhouse, What s Wrong with Japanese Trade Structure?, Pacific Economic Papers 137, Ch. P. Bown, The Economics of Trade Disputes, the GATT s Article XXIII, and the WTO s Dispute Settlement Understanding, Economics & Politics 14 (3), 2002, pp

24 A THAW IN NEGOTIATIONS IN THE 1980s EC--Japan negotiations entered a new stage from 1983 onwards as they focused on export moderations and the problems of their subsequent management against the background of persisting and growing mutual trade balance problems. The EC struggled with finding a way to efficiently tackle trade frictions which arose from the ascent of Japan as a determined exporter and a major industrial power. Throughout the negotiations in the 1980s, the Commission consolidated its trade policy authority which showed that the process of transformation in Europe was gradually leading to a more unified Europe. EC--Japan trade negotiations during this period can only be fully understood if they are seen in the context of the earlier development of overall bilateral, including political, relations. The Member States did not easily give up their own bilateral approach to trade policy. In the 1980s especially, some powerful French politicians were very active in setting the agenda for Community trade action. The first results from the trade negotiations were obtained in this period. Both Japan and the EC started genuine discussions to move ahead to solve extant trade frictions. Both parties even agreed on such issues as the setting of quantitative, verifiable export restrictions and obligatory export floor prices. This clearly gives evidence of the fragility of trade doctrines when they are confronted with global economic reality. The GATT Article XXIII dispute procedures which the EC had launched were de facto settled in 1983 when Japan adopted a wide-ranging Voluntary Restraint Agreement which limited and controlled Japanese exports of sensitive products to European markets. 7 In the second half of the 1980s, also other solutions to trade disputes and positive developments were recorded. Some of the disputes resulted into policy changes and legal reforms in Japan and proved that the European insistence on the issues of concern were not futile. Among the long-lasting trade disputes which had troubled relations between Japan and the Community up to and during the 1980s, there was one concerned with the structure of excise taxation applied to alcoholic beverages in Japan s Liquor Tax Law, which underwent a major reform in 1989 in response to a GATT dispute case brought by the Community against the discriminatory effects of that taxation. From the European side much was expected from these reforms which in practice would substantially reduce the incidence of taxation, especially on premium alcoholic beverages such as whisky and brandy, relative to domestic alcohol. There was the prospect of a substantial expansion of the market for western-style liquors and, within that volume, a greater market share for European imports given their global prominence. The reforms within Japan on the issue of liquor tax were only effective in light of foreign pressure. Foreign pressure or gaiatsu was often the only possible way to obtain policy changes in the wake of a weak opposition to the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party and its allies in the bureaucracy and industry. 8 The foreign firms and trade councils were part of the game, representing large and legitimate interests. They also employed skilled and determined lobbyists, both in public and private. In the end, resolution of the dispute was welcome on both sides, allowing Europe and Japan to move forward to deepen their relationship with one less thorny issue to tackle. 7 M. W. Lochmann, Japanese Voluntary Restraint on Automobile Exports: An Abandonment of the Free Trade Principles of the GATT and the Free Market Principles of United States Antitrust Laws, Harvard International Journal 27, 1986, pp L. J. Schoppa, Two-level Games and Bargaining Outcomes: Why Gaiatsu Succeeds in Japan In Some Cases But Not Others, International Organization 47, 1993, pp

25 At the time of the Japanese Bubble Economy, the EC s trade policy consisted primarily of continuing efforts to control trade frictions between the EU and Japan. The reason for this was that the EC's trade policy towards Japan suddenly had to cope with the effects of more aggressive US trade policies (cf. Reaganomics and the Super 301 clause) 9, but at the same time the Commission opted for an approach which differed from that of the US towards Japan. While the US resorted to bilateral negotiations by threatening and partly implementing protective and retaliatory actions against Japan, the EC s stance reflected the fact that quite a number of member states, most prominently the UK, found the option of becoming host to Japanese manufacturing investment and technology far more attractive than economic warfare. While all Member States wanted things to be kept on an even keel, they nevertheless did not hesitate to support the Commission in new GATT spats over liquor tax, semiconductors and automobile tax. Nevertheless, the EC's policy of containing trade problems during this period was very attentive to any possible diversion of Japanese exports from protected or threatened US markets towards the EC. The EC was also determined to counter any trade discrimination by Japan relative to the US, inter alia by seeking to uphold the MFN principle of the GATT. It also sought to benefit from concessions which the US had wrought bilaterally from Japan. This approach differed from the US and the EC endeavored, while defending the interests of its Member States, to avoid discrimination regarding access concessions by Japan. Aside from the liquor tax conflict, three additional cases of trade friction called the attention of the Europeans at the end of the 1980s. The first case concerns the Japan Harbour Management Fund (JHMA) which was apparently resolved in 1992 to the satisfaction of the EU (and the US). The issue revolved around extra costs extracted for restricted stevedoring services in Japanese ports. The second case concerns the so-called Nagoya Connection Case, typified by abuses of large-scale fraudulent pork imports which were brought to an end, although illegally underpriced import competition continued intermittently for years. The third case relates to the issue of European requests for fair access to Japan s large and lucrative construction market. The problem of discriminatory public procurement has been an issue that various European countries wanted to solve. 10 Given the political strength of vested interests in Japan, European industries quickly gave up after the failure of some tentative attempts to tackle the issue, and diplomatic efforts were suspended before they even started. These cases indeed are important and relevant for today s relationship between the EU and Japan, especially in the light of European approaches in the ongoing scoping exercise for an EU--Japan Economic Partnership Agreement: the EU has put government procurement in Japan on the agenda of the EPA discussions. 11 GAINING MOMENTUM IN THE 1990s As the 1980s turned into the 1990s, the relations between the European Community from November 1993 the European Union and Japan underwent a profound change that was to define their character for years to come. The year 1990 marked the end of decades of harsh trade conflicts during the 1970s and 1980s. The 1991 Hague Declaration on relations between the EC and Japan 9 M. Mastanduno, Setting Market Access Priorities: The Use of Super 301 in US Trade with Japan, The World Economy 15 (6), 1992, pp Fr. Trionfetti, Discriminatory Public Procurement and International Trade, The World Economy 23 (1), 2000, pp Ibid. 16

26 spells out a commitment of both sides to build a new, more cooperative relationship reaching beyond economic issues and trade disputes. The EU subsequently developed and confirmed its policy of cooperating with Japan in Commission policy papers and Communications as well as related Council Conclusions in 1992 and By opting for a cooperative, less confrontational approach, both parties made substantial efforts to develop an overall balanced relationship which combined cooperation in various areas, including in the political field, while trying to improve the skewed trade and economic relationship. Although the frustrating bilateral trade and economic situation which, until that point, had practically defined the EC--Japan relationship did not change fundamentally, this approach was a strategic and tactical choice on the part of the EC. Yet, on some issues the relationship continued to include structural barriers that the European negotiators realized would never change. A case in point are the Uruguay Round negotiations. 12 Japan, the world s most dynamic economy of the time, had indeed a sacred cow: agriculture. While the reform of internal policies would have been a prerequisite for progress in trade relations, the fact was that Japan could not and would not change its agricultural policy. In the end, both the EC and Japan managed to protect the core of their respective agricultural policies. Curiously, in the case of Japan, this was made possible by the fact that Japanese consumers shun American rice as a staple. The Japanese government therefore decided to buy up the quantities that Japan was supposed to import under the minimum access commitment. Apart from rice, the Japanese government managed, just like the EC, to preserve enough border protection and domestic support to keep its agriculture afloat under the new rules. As explained by Möhler, this was possible not because of the Japanese insistence on food security, but because the eventual compromise struck by the EC and the US gave enough room for Japanese agricultural policy to adjust. Despite the slowly unfolding economic crisis in Japan after the bursting of the Bubble in 1990, the EC deliberately shifted from earlier, more muscular policies towards non-confrontational, cooperative policies on economic and trade issues. Seeing signs during the first years of the 1990s that exports from Europe to Japan were increasing and that structural changes related to market access were forthcoming, European policymakers did not want to risk alienating a more powerful Japan. It was a time of intensifying dialogues and optimism on the European side, believing in self-generating structural economic adaptation processes in Japan and the power of objective arguments for improving EU market and investment access in Japan. The decision was therefore taken to pursue a different course to the US aggressive bilateral market opening campaigns which, at the time, smacked of managed trade. The positions on trade issues, which were not resolved at all, were subordinated to the further development of a comprehensive EU--Japan relationship. One important example of this less confrontational European approach towards Japan is to be found in the agreement between the EC and Japan to phase out restrictions on imports of Japanese cars which existed in a number of EU member states prior to This agreement became known as the Elements of Consensus and represents a fascinating example of the flexibility of European institutions as they adapt regulatory processes to achieve political ends within an ostensibly rigid legal framework. 13 What followed was the beginning of a relatively quiescent time in EU--Japan relations 12 W. Moon, Is Agriculture Compatible with Free Trade?, Ecological Economics 71, 2011, pp M. Mason, Elements of Consensus: Europe s Response to the Japanese Automotive Challenge, Journal of Common Market Studies 32 (4), 1994, pp

27 ( ). Indeed, this period is characterized by the consolidation of positive developments in bilateral ties along the lines set out in the Commission's March 1995 Communication Europe and Japan: the Next Steps (covering political and economic relations as well as cooperation in other fields). This period laid the groundwork for the realization of a more solid framework for cooperation from 2001 onwards, known as the 2001 Action Plan. While not spectacularly, EU--Japan relations improved with a steady pace across economic, political and cooperation activities. Following increased Japanese investments in the EU, motivated inter alia to escape anti-dumping measures, mutual economic relations expanded and trade disputes were resolved. This, in turn, gave rise to regulatory and structural reforms which were beneficial to both sides. The political dialogue improved, underpinned by reciprocal engagement in shared spheres of interests. The onset of new global challenges e.g. climate change, food security, ageing population, drugs and organized crime constituted an opportunity for the EU and Japan, as like-minded partners sharing the same values, to cooperate more deeply and effectively. One might, therefore, conclude that this was a period which reflected the growing maturity of EU--Japan relations and mapped out a step-by-step plan to realize greater cooperation in the future. STRONG COMMITMENTS, BUT UNTAPPED POTENTIAL IN THE 2000s In a speech in Paris in January 2000, Japanese Foreign Minister Kōno Yōhei, known to be a reliable friend of Europe, outlined his proposal for a deepened EU--Japan partnership. This resulted in a Joint Action Plan for a decade of cooperation from 2001 to This was a rather ambitious plan with multiple objectives ranging from a world free of weapons of mass destruction to intercultural dialogue, based inter alia on the exchanges of trainees and school twinning. No fewer than 22 different fora for sectoral dialogues were established and formalized, an edifice crowned by annual summits. As often when bilateral relations are harmonious, media interest in the EU and Japan for the decade of cooperation and the state of EU--Japan relations was small compared to the earlier periods of trade frictions. In Japan, public concerns were limited to worries about the lifting of the EU arms embargo against China in 2005, while in Europe the focus was on Japanese barriers to EU investments especially after EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson raised the matter in unambiguous terms during his visit to Tokyo in Later, during 2011, cooperation on access to rare earth metals and large Bank of Japan (BoJ) purchases of Eurobonds of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) triggered media interest on both sides. However, at the annual EU--Japan Summit in Tokyo in April 2010, the summit leaders (Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, joined by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton and European Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht) declared 2010 to be the year of renewal and pledged to share best practices in reviving their economies. Increasingly important and crucial for future progress in the relation between the EU and Japan is the role of the European parliament. Parliamentary exchanges between Japan and the EU constitute a significant aspect of the relationship and are growing in relevance. The importance of parliamentary exchanges has been increasing commensurate with the adoption of different EU treaties, especially since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December This Treaty also enlarged the competences of the European Parliament (EP), especially in the areas of 18

28 climate change and foreign and security policy. The additional competences of the EP in the decision making process of the EU now also cover international agreements. As the EP now has a decisive say in the conclusion of international agreements on trade, including services, direct investment and the protection of intellectual property rights, the EP will certainly insist on being well-informed during the negotiation process from the beginning of discussions in order to influence the negotiations in all stages and ensure conformity with the negotiation mandate. For this the EP can inform itself through its own inquiries, either by its respective committees or through its delegations for the relations with the relevant third country. The same will be true for the further deepening of EU climate policy as well as for foreign and security policies in the coming years. In this sense, the EP delegations for relations with Japan and the corresponding Japanese Diet delegations can and will grow in importance and influence. This is all the more true as parliamentarians in Japan and the EU realize more and more that third country relations are of great importance to national policies and that these relations should therefore not be left only to governments. WITHER EU--JAPAN RELATIONS? The 2010 Summit Declaration called for a conscious effort of both sides to go beyond the (over)concentration on economic issues in future EU--Japan relations and widen the ambit of cooperation to include political and strategic elements. A political framework, in addition to an EPA, is crucial to this end. Bringing the EU and Japan, despite their geographical distance, closer together will require an increased level of mutual economic and political engagement. Success stories such as the joint engagement of the EU and ASEAN in Aceh, Japan's activities in Mindanao (the Philippines) in cooperation with the UK, and its engagement in Sri Lanka together with Norway and the EU, could point the way. Reiterer in this book identifies a number of shared interests which could provide platforms for common political and strategic actions by discussing numerous examples: the EU and Japan have a joint interest in keeping Iran a nuclear weapons free zone and to assure non-proliferation in general; the EU appreciates Japanese engagement in Africa in the TICAD process (predating the Chinese offensive to assure access to raw materials); there is a joint interest in energy security and the security of the sea lanes leading to and from Japan; both the EU and Japan have common interests in combating international terrorism as well as piracy as demonstrated by the participation of Maritime Self-Defence Force ships in anti-piracy actions off the coast of Somalia; and both partners engaged in disaster relief operations in Haiti and Sumatra. Finally, Reiterer refers to the case of Afghanistan, where the Japanese role in training Afghan police forces (including financial support) contributes to the reconciliation process, and to the case of Pakistan, which clearly reveals that the EU and Japan share a common interest in spreading the rule of law and ensuring that states do not fail politically and economically. Cooperation between the EU and Japan is therefore not only important for both parties: it has a far-reaching impact on regional constructs in Asia and other parts of the world. CONCLUSION The timing for this presentation assessing past EU--Japan economic relations is most serendipitous. At their Summit in May 2011, the EU and Japan committed themselves to launch parallel 19

29 negotiations on 1) a deep and comprehensive Free Trade Agreement and Economic Partnership Agreement (FTA/EPA), addressing the whole range of issues of shared interest to both sides including tariffs, non-tariff measures, services, investment, intellectual property rights, competition and public procurement; and 2) a binding political agreement, covering political, global and other forms of cooperation in an all-inclusive manner. The former reflects Japan s emphatic wish to negotiate a comprehensive FTA/EPA in the face of EU reluctance, while the latter represents a continuation of the 2001 Action Plan which, given its non-binding nature, has proven to be rather unsatisfactory. The commitment to explore a remodeling of the past relationship has to be seen also against the background of the current rise of Asian economies, in particular China, and the increasingly closer relationship which the EU is developing with Asian nations. 20

37 Homeland Tourism, Long-distance Nationalism and Production of a New Diasporic Identity (Armenian case) Tsypylma Darieva Abstract This anthropologically informed paper attempts to re-conceptualize the nostalgic concept of homeland and more precisely the changing meaning of homecoming a key feature of any diasporic identity. I examine the phenomenon of contemporary homeland trips and homeland tourism in Armenia through the lens of long-distance nationalism and new cosmopolitanism. Introduction 1 The Armenian diaspora is considered to be a paradigmatic diasporic group associated with strong affiliation to ethnic roots forging long distance nationalism and political ethnocentrism. This ethnocentrism is reified in the notion of ancient culture, the uniqness of the Armenian race and its history (as the first Christian nation). Much has been written about Armenian diasporic nostalgia, its diverse representations and manifestations of cultural memory concerning the Armenian massacre in 1915 and the ways this memory forms diasporic belonging across borders and generations that has not disappeared to this day. It is not new to draw attention to the variations in intensity and goals of the ways in which diasporic members can combine transnational rooted and assimilative strategies. As noted by Peggy Levitt (2005), it reveals that transnational ethnic practices and assimilation are not diametrically opposed to each other. Instead, as this chapter shows, transnational ethnic practices and assimilation create diverse interconnectedness across different generations. Armenians who comprise the diaspora call themselves Spiurk and Armenians from the Republic of Armenia are known as Hayastantsy. These two notions characterize differences between these two groups along political, social and cultural lines. Historians identify Hayastantsy as Transcaucasian or Russian Armenians and spiurk as Ottoman or Turkish Armenians due to the geographical and political divisions between two Empires in the nineteenth century. A significant number of diasporic Armenians were expelled from the former Ottoman Empire (today Turkey) and not from the territory of modern-day Armenia. 2 They settled in the USA and other countries at the beginning of the twentieth century not only as refugees, but also as labour migrants. In terms of identity transformation, by the end of the 1980s, Armenian-Americans were characterized by Anny Bakalian (1994) as feeling and not being Armenian anymore. Despite a high level of assimilation and social mobility, there is still a remarkable level of institutional completeness in terms of diasporic community organizations (schools, churches, media, museums, charity organizations) and political lobbying in the US. 1 This paper is based on my previous publications (Darieva 2011, 2012) and a discussion after the lecture given at University of Kobe on 22.November I am grateful to my colleagues at Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, University of Kobe (Kazuko Iwamoto) for inspiring discussions and valuable comments, in particular to Shinnosuke Matsui, Kumi Tateoka and Takayuki Yokota-Murakami. 2 I leave Iranian Armenians aside. 28

38 We get out of the plane a smile runs across my face as I see Armenian writing and hear airport employees conversing in Armenian. Wait is it Armenian? It sounds like it, but I don t understand most of it. Oh no, my first feeling of culture shock. I get to the gate, fill out the paperwork and go straight to the immigration officer. I end up conversing him for 10 minutes! He looks through my passport and asks me the most thought provoking yet simple question: what has taken you so long to visit Armenia? Indeed, why has it? I had vacation time, I had the money, and I have the stamina to survive a long flight, so why not? (Armenian Volunteer Corps, spring 2007) This interview excerpt describes the emotional experiences of a third generation Armenian-American when he embarked on his diasporic homeland trip in Yerevan. It draws attention to a growing intensity of transnational meaningful interactions beyond leisure and tourism (Basu 2005) between members of second and third generation Armenian-Americans and ancestral homeland, the Republic of Armenia. In May 2007, during my fieldwork in Armenia 3, I interviewed twenty young English speaking volunteers of ethnic Armenian background who had travelled to Armenia as members of the Armenian Volunteer Corps (AVC): part of a three month programme to move mountains. 4 The Armenian Volunteer Corps, an international non-profit organization founded in 2001, calls on diasporic Armenians to volunteer their time, knowledge, and energy by living and working in Armenia to invest in the development of the homeland and enjoy a meaningful exchange. There are many different activities included in this meaningful exchange program, for example working in Yerevan s public organizations, schools, hospitals, NGOs, helping to develop an impoverished village or to rebuild a church. Among them, one specific activity which attracted many volunteers was to plant trees in urban parks, neighbourhoods, tree nurseries and in the city of Yerevan and its suburbs, organized by the diasporic Armenian Tree Project organization in Boston. Generally, this set of transnational activities and claims is identified as long-distance nationalism that connect people living abroad with a specific territory that they see as an ancestral home. They feel commonality with this land in terms of origin, history, identity and geographical distance and even other citizenship do not play any role in legitimization of their claims. Long distance nationalism is more likely to produce a specific ideology not just nostalgic imaginations for the past, but politics designed to influence the political situation within the territory of the homeland. These actions are often related to repatriation programs regulated and funded by the nation state: Jewish Aliya, in-gathering policies in Germany (Vertriebenegesetz and Aussiedlergesetzt), Kazakhstan (Law on Oralman), India, Italy and Japan. In Armenia, after WWII, between the 1940s and 1960s, Western Armenians enthusiastically participated in the state repatriation program known as nerghakht. Attracted by Stalin s campaign to repopulate the regions of Kars and Ardahan, which were contested with Turkey, about 100,000 Armenians from different countries resettled in Soviet Armenia. A formal territorial claim was made by the Kremlin to the 3 The ethnographic field work was conducted within the research project Identity Politics in Societies in Transition. Armenia on the Way to Europe? ( ) at Humboldt University, Berlin and funded by the German Research Society. 4 See last accessed 11 February

39 Turkish ambassador in Moscow, but it was dropped in 1949 with no border change (Suny 1993, Pattie 2004, Panossian 2006). Mobility in these cases is seen to renew and reinforce bounded identities and social relations. In this paper I am concerned with one other perspective, the possibility and potentiality that these transnational projects can be inspired by, or produce multiple, overlapping identities and cosmopolitan aspirations and projects. My main argument in this paper is that travelling, homeland tourism and other homecoming projects have increasingly less to do with a long distance nationalistic re-enactment of the past and vengeance for the past, but rather with a creative journey to the future and to some extent naïve ideal of a more cosmopolitan and global grassroot player Weltverbesserer (world improver). 5 Multiple forms of homeland attachment One of the key features identifying members of a diaspora is their continuing attachment to the homeland, regardless of whether it is an imagined or real country of exodus (Safran 1991, Brubaker 2005). Much has been written about the maintaining homogeneous ideals and ethnic paradigms of the diasporic identity, but there have been fewer investigations of the ways diasporic people practice this kind of attachment in the transnational age. Much has been said about the phenomenon of long-distance nationalism among diasporic activists (Glick Schiller 2005), but less has been studied the notion of diasporic cosmopolitanism. Real or symbolic attachment to the homeland can take many different forms and meanings. Cultural forms of homeland attachment go back to the production of ideas, symbols and images of an imagined ethnic community within a new homeland combined with the process of sacralization and worshipping the land of exodus visible in artistic expressions of nostalgic longing for home or in a simply hanging an image of the homeland in the living room. This sense of cultural repertoire is related to a more individual homeland attachment and transnational mobility is a less of importance. Other types of transnational homeland attachments recognize a growing mobility of diasporic people due to political and economic dimensions of their motivations. Activities related to financial investment, remittances, nostalgic trade, homeland and heritage tourism, temporal volunteer visits, civil society engagement among the first and second generation of diasporic people can be characterized as economic and social form of homeland attachment. In contrary, the political type of homeland attachment is associated with public activities of political diasporic associations which often based on practices of territorial claims or repatriation movements including in-gathering campaigns designed by national state programs in the home country. What is new for this type of transnational networks is an increasing role of mobility and travel within a specific trajectory and routs. Come move the mountains! Newcomers in Armenia and homecoming projects Along with dozens of visible, larger non-profit organizations working in the education and health 5 Somewhere else I have raised the problematic of appropriating a language of environmentalism that resonates with the critique of cosmopolitan claims made by Zlatko Skrbis, Gavin Kendala, and Ian Woodward. As politically naive and utopian drive to construct a new world of tolerance some cosmopolitanisms are not yet free of the risk of being seen as colonialism under another banner (Skrbis et al. 2004: 132). Skrbis, 30

40 sectors in Armenia, there are two quite successful homecoming target-oriented diasporic organizations, Armenian Volunteer Corps (AVC) and Birthright Armenia. Founded in 2001, both organizations are engaged in a kind of social and economic homecoming project for young diasporics in a particular way. Both volunteer organizations share the mission of affording the diasporic youth an opportunity to contribute to local development through professional work. Their specific goal is to support volunteering activities in Armenia by those who grew up in Western countries and who have at least one Armenian grandparent. Between 2007 and 2009, more than 400 male and female volunteers from the US, Canada, France, and Australia between the ages of 21 and 34 went to Armenia for periods varying from three months to two years. The number is growing. The question how can we understand the ways second and third generation Armenian-Americans engage with their homeland in transnational age when the ideal of repatriation entirely lost its attractiveness and the number of those who visit Armenia with a specific mission is growing? Admittedly, there is a new recent trend in diasporic-homeland relationships in Armenia. In 2008 the Ministry of Diaspora has been established in Armenia. A growing presence of the Armenian government and its strategic view on diasporic communities can reshape the ways diasporic Armenians engage with their homeland. This paper deals predominantly with non-governmental networks created by members of diasporic centers and individuals in the US. Source: Volunteer organizations (of particular interest to individuals under the age of 21) Birthright Armenia Armenian Volunteers Corps Land & Culture Organization Armenian Assembly of America Armenian Youth Federation AYF Western Region Youth Corps CYMA (Western Diocese) AGBU Yerevan Summer Intern Program Our Lady of Armenia Boghossian Educational Center 31

41 Diaspora-Armenia Connection (DAC) The Fuller Center for Housing Armenia Ari Tun (Come Home) supported by the Ministry of Diaspora Source: According to the charts above, more than 44 % of all volunteer organizations are based on the NGO level, and 70 % of the organizations are based in the US. The interesting point is that the Armenian volunteer work may speak of a desire to serve to the nation ; their efforts are not solely encompassed by this nationalist type of motivation. Without nationalistic slogans its goal is empowerment of human rights, women, minorities and ecology and a desire to join with those around the world who work to save the planet. This form of cosmopolitan bifocality links the fate of the nation to that of all humanity. Politically, AVC statements differ significantly from the goals of nationalist diasporic Armenians who identify themselves as Dashnaks. In contrast to traditional Dashnak s claims to annex lands in Eastern Anatolia inside Turkey and to establish an Armenian state on that territory, the AVC recruits young volunteers through a humanitarian rhetoric and focuses on the territory of the Republic of Armenia (Phillips 1989). Explaining his drive to settle in Armenia within the official AVC slogan Come Move Mountains, one 30-year-old male volunteer from Boston emphasized: There are many things to change here. You know, there is a problem of poverty, infrastructure. There is a problem of corruption. (Yerevan, on May 7, 2005). A unique feature of the Armenian homecoming in the twentieth century is that instead of returning to the actual ancestral places, the hometowns and villages in the Eastern Anatolian plateau (Turkey), grandsons and granddaughters instead invest, engage and settle in Armenia and the land neighbouring Turkey. 6 Therefore, Armenian-American diasporic visitors have no local dimension and intimate knowledge of a particular genealogy, place, or village in the territory of Armenia. It is not surprising that, unlike so many migratory transnational networks built on a foundation of individual informal ties of kinship and remittances to family members and an obligation to support 6 A hostile attitude towards Turkey among the spuirk still keeps Armenian-Americans from visiting Turkey. 32

42 local households (Armenians in Russia, Indians, Chinese or Ghanaians in the USA and Europe), members of the US-American diaspora build homeland ties primarily through formal NGOs and international organizations. This tendency by some diasporic groups to invest in countries other than their source countries (such as Croats from Serbia who invest in the newly independent Croatia) has rarely been studied by migration scholars. The question is whether this specific trajectory of travel influences the scope and intensity of engagement with the homeland and the tendency to combine ethnic parochial claims with globalized and universalist values. According to my observations and interviews, there is a shift in intensity in the way Armenian-Americans engage with the Republic of Armenia. In the early 1990s, some second generation Armenian-Americans were interested in cultural and emotional reconnection and individual homeland tourism, like visiting the country to touch materialized highlights of ancestors heritage (see Mount Ararat, visit medieval churches and monasteries), or for a symbolic act such as re-burying family members in the Armenian soil, or by bringing family relics to local museums in Yerevan (Darieva 2008). Here we can recognize different types of homeland tourism: rooted tourism, heritage tourism, cemetery tourism, and religious tourism. My recent observations and interviews reveal today these diasporic Armenians donate and invest in infrastructure projects like roads, the greening of urban parks, programs for poverty reduction in villages, and environmental projects. This kind of transnational mobility is still combined with homeland tourism, but it takes a new form which can be recognized as social remittance, where diasporic people transfer resources, ideas and behavior from receiving to sending countries (Levitt 1998, 2002). However, in the case of the Armenian diaspora in the US, we are dealing with a specific pattern of social remittances, which are driven by ideals of social entrepreneurship and the American culture of philanthropy. The number of contemporary diasporic newcomers in Armenia is not high, but it is generally believed that they have a significant political and economic impact in Armenia. Whereas, Armenia s neighbouring countries, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan, are considered to have been shaped by internal forces such as the effects of the Rose Revolution and oil businesses respectively, Armenia, as an impoverished and isolated country became a recipient of labour migrant remittances and of a large amount of donations and know-how input from diasporic networks in Western countries. Members of the third generation of Armenian-Americans are very heterogeneous with regard socio-political characteristics and their intensity of involvement in the activities of ethnic Armenian organizations. One feature that many American-Armenians share is their social status in the US, as they belong predominantly to the middle class. Although the investment and remittances have not significantly reduced the level of poverty in Armenia, Armenia continues to be more dependent on remittances and international aid than other post-soviet, South Caucasian societies (Caucasus Analytical Digest 2011). By transferring social and economic capital to help a poor country, Armenian-Americans gain a feeling of incorporation into their separate sacred homeland, but also the global issues of development and democracy. Today, they reclaim Armenian soil through activities that contribute to the global issues of human rights and the environment, issues that supposed to affect the entire planet and its inhabitants. 33

43 Homeland trip motivations: From nationalistic to global motivations? Regarding their motivations, diasporic people arrive in Yerevan not just to see the holy Mount Ararat (Agri Dagi), but rather to develop Armenia. Temporary visits with a duration of three months to two years are often described by these young volunteers as a kind of philanthropic giving or individual adventure, as well as a symbolic act of reuniting with the ancestral homeland. In both cases, the motivations and aspirations of volunteers and of the institutions that mediated their travel have been framed in discourses of an exchange of skills and know-how between developing and developed societies. Conducting a group interview with eight young volunteers in Yerevan on 5 December 2007, I posed a question regarding the direct and indirect motivation to participate in this program. All the respondents stated that their travel was not necessarily related to a natural behaviour of diasporic decedents. A volunteer from Australia explicitly emphasized the individual and pragmatic dimension of her goal: I came here primarily as a volunteer it was not so much about Armenia as it was about me coming here to help people, as I had no real links with my homeland before I came...my travel is kind of giving me a big kick, showing me where I want to be Another informant stressed his aspiration of engaging with Armenia as a perfect time for a life-stage event and as a good place for collecting life experience. Similar to the experiences of other European second generation transnationalists (Turkish Germans, Swiss Italians, Greek Germans or British Pakistani) the homeland trip was made in a quest for personal freedom and self-realization (Wessendorf 2009, King and Christou 2011). Victoria from Washington DC talked of her decision to travel to Armenia: I am not tied down with family, with a career, with all these things and it is a perfect, perfect time to travel. And I always knew that it was the place where I would want to go. There are a lot of life experiences that I think are necessary to gain right now and it is a great time to do that. Australian-born third generation Serena, who travelled to Armenia for nine months, talked of the adventurous side of her homeland trip : I am trying to make my everyday life like an adventure, because I am not in Australia now, and do not have to stick with this or that job, do not have any responsibilities. Finally, many interview respondents emphasized the cultural heterogeneity of the social environment in which they grew up. This aspect is related to the fact that at least four of the interview respondents identified themselves as being half-armenian and having grown up in ethnically mixed families. Many of the volunteers explained that their motivations were not influenced by their parents ambitions, but rather their decision to come to Armenia was independent of their parents. Moreover, the majority of the volunteers I talked to during my field work viewed their transnational activity and behaviour in a different way to their parents, the latter seemingly following a sedentary pattern 34

44 of interaction. Lucia (26 years old), whose father is of Armenian descent and mother Austrian, explained her experience in this way: My father has never been to Armenia. I was hoping that I would get him to come to Armenia during my stay, but unfortunately he is not going to come. I suppose he is scared to come to Armenia to see how ideal it is not It is not the utopian ideal society that he kind of wants it to be. Only a few of the volunteer s parents had actually travelled to Armenia before their children visited the sacred land. Thus their transnational engagement with the homeland differs in character and intensity, but it does not mean that they do not participate in transnational social connectedness. As mentioned previously, some parents prefer to support transnational organizations by donating and investing money in their children s travel or in maintaining transnational projects. Armenian Tree Project: Between metaphors of ethnic rootedness and cosmopolitanism? One of the areas where long distance notions of attachment to the homeland is pronounced in a less nationalist framework and rhetoric, is that of social remittance which stresses the value of individual engagement, global development and ecological harmony on humanitarian values. In the following section, I give some insights into this practice which was developed in Watertown (Boston area, MA) by the Armenian Tree Project. Though, the idea of this project has been inspired by the Jewish Zionist nationalistic Tree planting campaign in the , it has significant differences. The ATP was founded in 1994 in Watertown and in Yerevan by Caroline Mugar, a second-generation Armenian-American, whose father left the village of Kharpet in Anatolia in 1906 to settle in Massachusetts. Later, between the1940s and the 1960s, Mugar s father and his brother became very successful businessmen, establishing the popular US supermarket chain, Star Market. The Watertown ATP office brings a large amount of capital into Yerevan, opening nurseries, planting trees and starting projects in surrounding villages. The local office s activities in Yerevan are divided into three main tree-planting sites: community sites in the city, nurseries, and impoverished villages with a high percentage of Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan. Soon, Armenian Tree Project expanded its activities to larger projects such as reforestation and environmental education programs in the Lori region, in the northern part of Armenia. The economic resources derive mostly from public fundraising ceremonies organized by the ATP in the Boston area and elsewhere among Armenian-Americans. Memory of the Armenian losses in 1915 has become a powerful symbol for successful fundraising campaigns within diasporic networks in Massachusetts. However, the ATP has not only received generous support from a cluster of US Armenian family foundations, but also from international such as Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund. The projection of the homeland as an evergreen landscape, which has been created by the ATP, is built on European and North American romanticized images of nature. In its aesthetic design and combination of colours, the tree landscape differs from the traditional representations of the Armenian garden, which uses vineyard metaphors (Petrosyan 2001). The ATP s official logo design is three triangular green trees, which is similar to the design on oriental rugs. Flyers, Websites, newsletters, and donation certificates are identified by an image of three evergreen trees without any 35

45 specific mountain images. Both the mountain and the trees are essentialising symbols of nature. But unlike the mountain, which is highly associated with a particular historical longing for a past and the Armenian territorial loss, a tree represents social qualities, such as vitality, cultural universality, and a powerful orientation towards the future. At the same time there have been strong connections between environmental romanticism and nationalism since the end of the nineteenth century (Lekan 2004, Rival 1998). Thinking in terms of roots and trees reminds us of the yearning of nations in the search for their roots in an ethnic past (Smith 1986, Malkki 1997). The trees are the physical evidences of the Armenian attachment to the heritage and provide a unique emotional bond established through the act of tree planting between the past and the present. It is true that the emotional power of tree planting action are reinforced by the ecological assertion that trees can be good for the environment. The trees and their images are intermediaries between past and present, death and birth bonding the diasporic place with the holy Mount Ararat. However, unlike the Zionist forestation campaign in Israel (Bardenstein 1999, Braverman 2009), which pursued the aim of putting down roots in a new place and reclaiming the territory to the exclusion of others, tree-planting actions in Armenia serve as a social marker of a new transnational bond between the homeland and the diaspora, and between a small corner of the world and global issues. There are specific techniques of cultivating donors among the Armenian-Americans. The most popular individual donation is 50 US $ given several times in the year. More diasporic Armenians are involved in this activity. In the US over Armenian-Americans, around 4000 donors from MA donate more than 100 US $ and over 520 record of those who regular donate over 1000 US $ per year. According to the ATP office in Watertown, donations are made mostly at the end of the year close to the fixed day of tax declaration. Tree-planting in Armenia has had a particular transnational impact on life circle rituals (birthdays, anniversaries and deaths) within the Armenian diasporic organizations in the Boston area. Increasingly, diasporic people donate to the ATP in commemoration of a family member. Another transnational technique developed by the ATP is a Green Certificate that can be presented to donors confirming their sponsorship of tree planting in Armenia. Increasingly, donors also make pilgrimages to the sites where sponsored trees were planted and to nurseries in Armenia. In the Armenian case, national imaginary can stimulate a simultaneous inclusive globalism so that universal and cosmopolitan ideas and practices are implemented within redefinitions of homecomings and transnational narratives of reconnecting the diaspora with the homeland. The rhetoric of the Armenian Tree Project tries to create a new dimension for envisioning a mutually acceptable future that diminishes the tensions between us spiurk and them Hayastantsy via global issues. In 1998, for example, the Armenia Tree Project jointly initiated an event to mark Earth Day and Arbor Day in Armenian villages. The date, 22 April, coincides with Vladimir Lenin s birthday; the traditional day for celebrating volunteer work initiated by the Soviet authorities. In the soviet period, everyone (Soviet institutions, schools, enterprises, etc.) was required to mark this day by cleaning the immediate area around which they worked or studied and then plant a tree. This day has since been transformed into global Earth Day. In an ATP newsletter from spring 2007, one can read the official, twofold vision and pledge to Armenia: We will use trees to improve the standard of living of Armenians and to protect the global environment (2007: 2). This quotation indicates that planting trees simultaneously brings to mind a naturalized and ethnicized connotation based on the typical diasporic search for roots of renewal, 36

46 and is also re-conceptualized within broader global frameworks. By positioning actions within a movement to sustain and protect the planet, the act of tree planting to help Armenia is transformed into a form of creative cosmopolitan discourse. The newsletter also states: We are proud to join the international effort to plant trees to fight climate change, which is worsened by rampant deforestation around the world. In 2006, the ATP joined the worldwide tree planting campaign launched by the Billion Tree Campaign (2007: 2). There is a tendency to compare contemporary Armenian diasporic inspirations and mobility experiences with the Jewish case, but the Armenian engagement with the homeland should not be equated with the Jewish Zionist movement. In contrast to the Jewish Zionist project and its relationship to Israel, the Armenian diaspora does not have an ideological foundation for supporting Armenia as there is with Zionism. In spite of its continuity, the ties between the homeland and the diaspora are relatively weak and the diaspora s support for Armenia is less institutionalized and less strategic (compare with Braverman 2009), but more individualistic and project-specific. There is no such a state funded repatriation program and a strong ideology of Zionism. Until the end of the 1980s there were only weak and irregular connections between the Soviet republic of Armenia and the US Armenian diasporic communities. But, today it seems dreams to be united with the homeland became real and there is a new interest towards the holy place and that leads to a growing mobility among diapsoric Armenians. Whereas the Zionist project is characterized by a mono-cultural use of the pine tree (and a physical occupation of the land through planting pine trees) promoting an ethnically driven security agenda (Braverman 2009), the Armenian Tree Project, in both donation and landscape greening techniques, is not fixed to the ecological symbolism of any particular tree. Instead, it emphasizes Armenia s biodiversity in a global context and sees Armenia as part of a larger region the Caucasus. Having started with planting fruit trees for villagers, the ATP now plants a wide range of decorative trees as well as forest trees: North American and Eastern Asian thuja, Crimean wild rose, Chinese magnolia, etc. As a part of an international project, ATP tree planting is linked to a commitment to biodiversity, which is made explicit in the curriculum for environmental education published in English and Armenian: There is biodiversity within a forest. Forests contain many communities that support diverse populations of organisms. Different forests have different levels of biodiversity. Armenia has a complex relief, as a result of which the regions have strongly differing natural climatic conditions (e.g., precipitation, temperature, topography, etc.) These variations lead to different forest communities with differing species, thereby contributing to Caucasian biodiversity. Armenia is considered part of the world s 25 most ecologically diverse ecosystems by the World Wild Fund for Nature (Wesley 2010: 16). Thus, the idea and practice of engaging with the homeland among second- and third-generation Western diasporic Armenians in the Republic of Armenia is based less on regaining a lost intimacy and a place of origin, but rather on the desire to connect a specific territory to the rest of the world 37

47 by developing the country. The question is to what extent this specific trajectory of travel gives trend to combine ethnic parochial claims with globalized and universalist values. Cosmopolitanism is often equated with the experience of mobility in the modern world (Cahloun 2002, Appiah 2006). I am against making teleological connections among mobility, transnational networks and cosmopolitanism. In this sense, it would be wrong to assume that diasporic people and the nature of transnational networks develop evolutionally from ethnic/national members of the first generation, to transnational members of second generation Armenian-Americans and finally to cosmopolitan members of the third generation. It is rather an overlapping process, with a temporal modus and embedded in different local contexts. In my mind, the anthropological approach to understanding diasporic cosmopolitanism and diasporic social activism is not only to analyse the ethnic roots and regularities within which migration takes place, but also to study how social change is affected by migration, to study the transformations in both host and homeland societies and generational change. In this case rooted cosmopolitanism means simultaneity of ethnic parochial closure and openness to diversity and global human ideas where rootedness and openness cannot be seen in oppositional terms but constitute aspects of creativity. References Appiah, K. A. (2006) Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in a World of Strangers, W.W. Norton: New York Bakalian, A. (1994) Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers Bardenstein, C. (1999) Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli Collective Memory, in M. Bal, J. Crewe and L. Spitzer (eds) Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, Hanover: Dartmouth College, pp Basu, Paul (2005) Roots Tourism as Return Movement: Semantics and the Scottish Diaspora, in M. Harper (ed.) Emigrant Homecomings. The Return Movement of Emigrants, , Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp Braverman, I. (2009) Planting the Promised Landscape: Zionism, Nature and Resistance in Israel/Palestine, The Natural Resources Journal, vol. 49, pp Brubaker, R. (2005) The Diaspora Diaspora, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, pp Caucasus Analytical Digest (2011) Poverty in the South Caucasus, No 34, 21 December Cahloun, C. (2002) The class consciousness of frequent travelers: Toward a critic of actually existing cosmopolitanism, in South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 4, pp Cohen, C. (2004) Planting Nature. Trees and the Manipulation of Environmental Stewardship in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cohen, R. (1997) Global Diasporas. An Introduction, London: UCL Press Darieva, T (2008) The Road to the Golgotha. Representing Loss in Postsocialist Armenia, in Focaal, European Journal for Anthropology, vol. 52, pp (2011) Rethinking Homecoming. Diasporic Cosmopolitanism in Post-socialist Armenia, in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 34, 3, pp (2012) Between Long-Distance Nationalism and Rooted Cosmopolitanism? Armenian-American Engagement with their Homeland, in Ziemer U. and S. Roberts (eds.) East 38

67 国 際 部 第 5 回 講 演 会 日 時 2013 年 2 月 22 日 ( 金 ) 午 後 4 時 ~5 時 30 分 場 所 大 学 院 国 際 文 化 学 研 究 科 E 棟 4 階 学 術 交 流 ルーム Understanding Growth Strategies in Retailing: From Internationalization to the Development of New Retail Formats Karine Picot-Coupey The research presentation consisted in the presentation of an overview of my research topics. The common theme to my research works is the understanding of growth strategies in retailing. It is from the perspective of internationalization on the one hand, and the perspective of developing new formats on the other hand. The workshop was organized around three papers that illustrate these fields of research. 1. Picot-Coupey K. (2009), Determinants of a Retailer s Choice of International Expansion Mode: Conceptual Model and Empirical Validation, Recherche et Applications en Marketing, 24, 4, (English edition) Many retail companies are currently developing their store networks beyond their domestic market. Each operation abroad requires choosing an internationalization mode. The aim of this research consists in analyzing the determinants of retail store networks choice of an international expansion mode. A conceptual model of the determinants suggested in the literature is developed on the basis of results of previous research and enhanced by the analysis of eleven interviews with top retail managers. Based upon the results of a study involving 43 top international managers of French fashion retail networks, the model is tested using the PLS approach. This research provides evidence which highlights the explanatory influence of the chain s international marketing policy, the strategic and capitalistic profile and the perceived attractiveness of the foreign market through the three dimensions of an international expansion mode: dissemination risk, control over decisions and resource commitment. The moderating influence of the international involvement of top managers and that of relationship networks are also highlighted. 2. Picot-Coupey K., The pop-up store as a foreign operation mode (FOM) for retailers, Under Evaluation in International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management The objective of this research is (i) to describe the characteristics of a pop-up store in an international context, (ii) to investigate the motivating factors for its choice and (iii) to analyse the way in which it is managed. A multiple-case study was adopted. Research was carried out using secondary data sources, social media measurement and semi-structured interviews with senior managers in charge of the international development and management of pop-up stores. A conceptualizing content analysis was conducted both manually and with NVivo software. The main results cover the following aspects of an international pop-up store and highlight the differences between this choice of FOM and other store formats: 58

68 key characteristics: location, design and architecture, merchandise mix, and in-store or store-related events; choice motivations: three motivations were found, which were (i) to test and adapt the concept with foreign consumers possibly unfamiliar with such a store concept, (ii) to raise and sustain the international profile of a retail brand, and (iii) to develop relationship networks with stakeholders in foreign markets; management: a dynamic approach is adopted as management style varies from mode switch at the entry stage to mode combination at the further expansion stage. The results of this research suggest avenues for future research, particularly in relation to how the concept of the international pop-up store will evolve over time. This research provides guidelines for international retail managers wishing to choose a pop-up store as a foreign operation mode (FOM). This research provides a new insight into the characteristics, choice motivations, and management of a pop-up store in an international context. 3. Picot-Coupey, Karine, Huré, Elodie, Cliquet, Gérard and Petr, Christine(2009) 'Grocery shopping and the Internet: exploring French consumers' perceptions of the 'hypermarket' and 'cybermarket' formats', The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 19: 4, The growth of e-commerce calls into question the viability of traditional retail formats. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), especially the Internet, now play a major role in retailing. With the stagnation of the hypermarket format in France, developing ICT could be a way for grocery retail companies to reinitiate growth. Some questions arise concerning the consumers acceptance of these new technologies for food retailing. How does the consumer perceive the opportunities for the Internet and what associations do they hold for their favorite store? To what extent could consumers integrate ICT, especially the Internet, in their current or in future grocery shopping behaviours? Within this context, this paper focuses on the consumer store relationships. The research aims to explore consumers perceptions of hypermarket and cybermarket formats for grocery shopping. The methodology is qualitative and based on 18 semi-structured interviews and on three focus groups of French consumers. Results show that the hypermarket format continues to appeal to French consumers while the cybermarket format remains unclear. The two targets the organised and the grumblers are an exception to this trend. 59

81 From Crisis to Integration? European Diversity and Identity, Transnationalism, and Institutional Change Kolja Raube The Crisis of the European Union The European Union is in crisis. But the crisis of the European Union (EU) is not only an economic and fiscal crisis. As analysts and academics have pointed out, the current situation and solutions thereof resemble a larger crisis of EU integration a crisis of al lack of public support and trust in EU institutions and actors, in their capability to provide the people with effective decision-making. Public perception of the EU is increasingly negative, while political elites do not necessarily buy into the necessity of an ever closer union; the proposed referendum of Cameron whether the UK remains in the EU being a good, but extreme example, indeed. Hence, we face at least a two-fold problem in the EU at the moment; the one being related to an economic and fiscal crisis in parts of Europe, with large impacts on societies, austerity measures, a slowing down of economic productivity, unemployment and reduced economic demand; the other one being related to a growing skepticism of whether the European integration and related institutions and actors are able to foresee policy decisions which would improve living conditions of European societies in the future. In other words, one of the fundamental incentives of the EU project is set in question: to which extend the Union is able to serve as a framework that is perceived to be beneficial for European societies. In this contribution to the workshop of the University of Kobe in Brussels I make the argument that crisis can be a starting-point for further integration. While building this argument on ideas by Hartmut Kaelble (2005) and more recently Timothy Garton Ash (2012), I argue that the crisis of the EU can be seen as a chance to reflect upon a couple of options how the EU could be understood in order to move the integration process forward. On the one hand, I show that the current crisis has underlined diversities in the EU. While in the past unity in diversity served as a phrase to justify the diversities within a homogenizing EU (see Kaelble 2009), this positive notion of diversity in unity seems to have come under attack. Currently, diversity in the EU is seen more and more not only as a threat to the integration project, but to European individuals and societies at-large, especially in view of their ability to maintain and progress their conditions of life. As a consequence, the question on the benefit of the integration process is often linked to material objectives. The question What s in it for me?, as Joseph Weiler recently argued, implies a reduction of the European project to the measurable, leaving out those aspects of the project which are of added-value to European societies, but simply uncountable (2012). Overall, diversity in Europe is not only resembled in how differently citizens feel attached to the EU in times of crisis, but also how different they feel from others, and whether they are willing to cooperate with other people and societies in the future. On the other hand, I argue that if we want to take the crisis as a starting point for further integration this would mean to understand if, despite all diversity, integration is a viable concept for further integration. In this regard, it is necessary to outline some options how the EU could be understood if the crisis was a perceived as a starting point for further integration. In the remainder of 72

82 this contribution I will argue that such an understanding of the EU could, inter alia, be linked to a) an understanding of the EU as a space of transnational interactions and interdependence, b) an understanding of the EU in which diversity and difference are a normality and of added-value rather than a state-of-affair that needs to be overcome, c) an understanding of the future European integration as a deliberative choice, including institutional changes, between what Jürgen Habermas recently called executive federalism and transnational democracy. It is, amongst others, these three understandings of the EU that impact on presenting the crisis as a starting-point for further integration. Diversity and the perception of the European Union in times of crisis The European Union has a famous motto: Unity in Diversity. Adopted in 2000, it is essentially about two inseparable and competing aspects of the EU. While unity points to the coming together and the united achievements of European societies, diversity points to the fact that European societies remain essentially different. The motto obviously underlines the need for both unity and diversity in the course of European integration. The concept of diversity is a concept that has sharpened the awareness for the EU s own plurality. Indeed, as Calder and Ceva argue dealing with diversity has become a familiar part of institutional practice in the public sphere, just as it has become more prominent in legislation. Attention to the questions it raises has become more and more important in public life. The European Union slogan United in Diversity reflects this importance. (Calder and Ceva 2011: 1). European integration theories have often seen integration as a synonymous process to fusion, cohesion and convergence (Mair/Zielonka 2002: 2). As a concept, diversity is essential to understand that the EU is not only about commonalities, but that there is an inherent cultural, historical, political, legal, economic plurality in the EU, that continues to be shaped by diverse European societies. Overall, diversity rather points to the underlying diverse structures of the EU. For instance, diversity is essentially about Europe s diverse social stratification (Mau/Verwiebe 2010), diverse legal and political institutions, diverse economic and financial markets (Zielonka 2005). As Landfried has pointed out: diversity describes [solely] the existing structural differentiation within a society and between societies. (Landfried 2011: 20) And, indeed, diverse structures matter, as after the last large enlargement round the structure of European society presents itself as more diverse than before (Mair/Zielonka 2002; Zielonka 2005). Diversity can also change over time. As EU enlargement shows, diversity within the EU and diversity of European societies and member states can change. Institutional changes, following the diversity logic (Mair/Zielonka 2002), can lead to an increased diversity within the multi-level institutional structure of the EU (Zielonka 2005). One obvious example is the Council setting in the European Union where after the last enlargement the intake of new member states led to the representation of 27 member state governments. In the case of foreign policy, the structural differentiation increased not only based on the new formal representation of Eastern European countries, but also because of the increase of structural representation of pro-transatlantic views in EU foreign policy. The European public-debt and economic crisis has made diversities come to the fore. European economies are highly intertwined through transnational economic and capital business; but 73

83 European economies and societies at-large are affected asymmetrically by the crisis. This is not only clear in front of the sheer numbers of, for example, unemployment rates and economic growth across EU Member States. Also the effects of the EU s emergency measures (austerity) to counter-act and to avoid the failure of the European Monetary Union (EMU) have impacted upon European societies in different ways, with Greece being the most radical example. While in the past unity in diversity served as a phrase to justify the diversities within a homogenizing EU (see Kaelble 2009), this positive notion of diversity in unity seems to have come under attack. Currently, diversity in the EU is seen more and more seen not only as a threat to the integration project, but to individuals and societies at-large regarding the ability to maintain and progress their conditions of life. Protesters in Greece show their disagreement with the overall austerity measures, identifying German Chancellor Merkel as being responsible for the enforced austerity measures and the worsening of their social conditions. On the other hand, Germans express in their public debates their prejudice against the way Südeuropäer ( South-Europeans ) run their public households, fearing that the interdependent relationship between the South and the North will lead to less economic progression in the future. Figure 1: Copy from Eurobarometer 78, 2012 Eurobarometer findings show in the first place that indeed the perception of the economic situation by citizens and the personal problems that citizens face differs according to countries of 74

Japanese Civilian Control in the Cold War Era Takeo MIYAMOTO In European and American democratic countries, the predominance of politics over military, i.e. civilian control, has been assumed as an axiom.

The Development of Chonaikai in Tokyo before The Last War Hachiro Nakamura The urban neighborhood association in Japan called Chonaikai has been more often than not criticized by many social scientists.

A Consideration on Studies of English Literature in Japan This paper attempts to formulate the significance of English literary studies in present-day Japan, and to carve out new horizons of them. First,

2011 8 6 2011 5 7 [1] 1 2 i ii iii i 3 [2] 4 5 ii 6 7 iii 8 [3] 9 10 11 cf. Abstracts in English In terms of democracy, the patience and the kindness Tohoku people have shown will be dealt with as an exception.

Repatriation and International Development Assistance: Is the Relief-Development Continuum Becoming in the Chronic Political Emergencies? KOIZUMI Koichi In the 1990's the main focus of the global refugee

JAPANESE SHIP-OWNERS AND WORLD BULK MARKET BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS Mariko Tatsuki Keisen University After World War I, Japanese shipping suffered for a long time from an excess of tonnage and severe

A Preliminary Study of Internationalization at the Local Level: The Case of Aikawa Town in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan FUKUSHIMA Tomoko and FUJISHIRO Masahito In recent years, as foreign residents increase

Establishment and Challenges of the Welfare Benefits System for Elderly Foreign Residents In the Case of Higashihiroshima City Naoe KAWAMOTO Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima University

542012 4157 Nishino Toshiaki The purpose of this paper is to analyze the present conditions of the mountain villages of Japan in the early 21 st century. The revolution of fuel sources from a predominance

The Key Questions about Today's "Experience Loss": Focusing on Provision Issues Gerald ARGENTON These last years, the educational discourse has been focusing on the "experience loss" problem and its consequences.

Enquiry CEPA website (http://www.tid.gov.hk/english/cepa/index.html) provides information on the content and implementation details of various CEPA liberalisation and facilitative measures, including the

Research in Higher Education - Daigaku Ronshu No.24 (March 1995) 77 A Study of the Process of Establishing the Student Stipend System in the Early Years of the PRC Yutaka Otsuka* This paper aims at explicating

[Abstactl Tennoh (Emperor), Courtiers, and Warriors MURAI Yasuhiko Tennoh (Emperor), courtiers, and the warriors have formed the ruling class of the Japanese society over a long history. In ancient history

SUMMARY Japan is one of the most earthquakeprone country in the world, and has repeatedly experienced serious major damages. No matter how serious the impact of earthquake disasters, each and every time,

Transformation and Various Aspects of Community Popular Education in Tokyo in Meiji Era Takeo Matsuda The purpose of this paper is to examine the variety and transformation of community popular education

Evaluation of the Social Benefits of the Regional Medical System Based on Land Price Information -A Hedonic Valuation of the Sense of Relief Provided by Health Care Facilities- Takuma Sugahara Ph.D. Abstract

The Japanese economy in FY2015 suffered from sluggish growth in individual consumption, while the foreign exchange market remained unstable with high volatility. Even in such an economic environment, MSF

No.149 Feb/1999 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Learned From Japanese Life and Experiences in Kagoshima When I first came to Japan I was really surprised by almost everything, the weather,

Housing Purchase by Single Women in Tokyo Yoshilehl YUI* Recently some single women purchase their houses and the number of houses owned by single women are increasing in Tokyo. And their housing demands

JOURNAL OF MITSUBISHI RESEARCH INSTITUTE No. 35 1999 (03)3277-0003 FAX (03)3277-0520 E-mailprd@mri.co.jp 76 Research Paper Group Management in the Development of Decentralized Management Satoshi Komatsubara,

28 2004 pp. 145 159 1 Received October 29, 2004 In 1999, North Korea reversed the negative economic growth of the 90s, and displayed a positive trend which, although weak, was maintained at 1.8% in 2003.

ABSTRACT The "After War Phenomena" of the Japanese Literature after the War: Has It Really Come to an End? When we consider past theses concerning criticism and arguments about the theme of "Japanese Literature

Foster care is a system to provide a new home and family to an abused child or to a child with no parents. Most foster children are youngsters who could not deepen the sense of attachment and relationship

312013 95 Changes and Restructuring of Social Issues of the Urban Underclass Area with Increasing Welfare Needs in Kotobuki, Yokohama Kahoruko YAMAMOTO This paper explains social changes and restructuring

論 文 Hospitality in the Tourism Industry: Present Conditions and Problems Kazuko TATENO and Ryozo MATSUMOTO Abstract The meaning and usage of hospitality varies according to different fields of study and

48 2006 21 36 Koya KISHIDA, Shuji HISAMUNE, Toshihiko OSHIMA and Akira TAKEI Recently, when the accident occurs, the social influences of the accident became more and more severe. Keifuku Electric Railroad

Possibility of Literary Criticism as Practical Science Kenji Hashimoto At the end of the 20th century, the Japanese social system underwent a period of great change. At this time, the Japanese people were

No.146 Feb/1998 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Once in a Lifetime Experience in a Foreign Country, Japan If it was not of my mentor, a teacher and a friend I would never be as I am now,

262 F s PRO A Community Investment and the Role of Non-profit Organizations: Present Conditions in the US, the UK, and Japan Takashi Koseki Abstract 1. The issue of SRI (Socially Responsible Investment)

Bulletin of Osaka University of Pharmaceutical Sciences 1 (2007) Articles Medical Reform and Medical Service Market for Restructuring of the Community Medical System Isao ABE Osaka University of Pharmaceutical

225 ON THE PRUSSIAN PEOPLE EDUCATION ON THE MATURE STAGE OF ABSOLUTISM Shoji Department of Education, Nara University of Education, Nara, Japan Ishii In order to observe the preceding conditions for the

No.7, 633-644 (2006) Regime of Information Control and Its Collapse in North Korea MIYATA Atsushi Nihon University, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies Recently, there are cracks being formed

ABSTRACT The Social Function of Boys' Secondary Schools in Modern Japan: From the Perspectives of Repeating and Withdrawal TERASAKI, Satomi (Graduate School, Ochanomizu University) 1-4-29-13-212, Miyamaedaira,

Percival Osborn and his pupils at Nanao Gogakusho Ichiryo Imai At the end of the second year of Meiji (1869 A. D.) an English oyatoi came to Nanao, a port town in Kaga, in order to teach English and French

Under White Australia Policy, Australian novels, which originated from the European values of individuality and the high-mindedness and supremacy of European imagination, played a vitally important role

Eugene O Neill, ~ Long Day s Journey into NightJourney A Moon for the Misbegotten Moon James O Neill Jr. Journey Journey Journey John Henry Raleigh O Neill s Long Day s Journey into Night and New Irish-Catholicism

SOCIALISM IN JAPAN MEIJI SOCIALIST THOUGHT Hiroaki Matsuzawa Most of the socialists in the Meiji era were born in the 1860s, at the dawn of a new era, and grew up along with the new regime. Thus they were

SO EU Montana State University Japan Natural Legacies Keynote Speech Environmental Policies in Japan Past, Present, Future SO SO SO SO SO NO SO ppm BOD ppm ppm cm SO ppm ppm SOppm ppm H Weidner H.Weidner

No. 19 January 19 2013 19 Regionalism at the 19 th National Assembly Elections Focusing on the Yeongnam and Honam Region Yasurou Mori As the biggest issue of contemporary politics at South Korea, there

Understanding of Language in Early Development ( ) Research by Visiting Home (3) Center of developmenta1 education and research Center of developmenta1 education and research Center of developmenta1 education

The purpose of this study is to clarify a process that Awa dance developed into tourist resources and the factors that it spread out in all over Japan. Consideration was made with the memory magazines,

Speedy & Simple Kenji, Yoshio, and Goro are good at English. They have their ways of learning. Kenji often listens to English songs and tries to remember all the words. Yoshio reads one English book every